AA PharmaSyn provides safe harbor for 10 ex-Pfizerites

Hundreds of Pfizer workers were looking for a safe port in the storm created by the drug-maker when it closed its Ann Arbor campus in early 2007. One of those safe harbors turned out to be AA PharmaSyn.Helen Lee and Suemin Cheng both left Pfizer just before it closed, to start AA PharmaSyn because they wanted to stay in Ann Arbor. Today the chemistry contract research organization employs 10 people, all of whom once worked at the pharma giant. “We average about 20 years at Pfizer,” Lee says. “We like to call ourselves ex-Parke Davis (the company Pfizer bought to establish an Ann Arbor presence) employees.”Many of those hires came quickly after the Pfizer closing in 2007. AA PharmaSyn has been busy managing the work it has since then. The company would welcome new employees if the right ones come along, but Lee and Cheng plan to keep it small for the foreseeable future.”We’d really like to keep the door open,” Lee says. “We’d like to expand but no more than 20 people.”Source: Helen Lee and Suemin Cheng, co-founders of AA PharmaSynWriter: Jon Zemke